Set during the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in the 1980s, A Girl Made of Dust is a novel written with such maturity, it is hard to believe that it’s a debut. Ruba is ten and lives with her family in Ein Douwra, a village outside of war torn Beirut. Older brother Naji has taken to collecting spent artillery shells fired by soldiers in the depleting forest around their home.

He has also been hanging out with a group of gun-toting older boys. Her friend Karim is being treated badly by other children because he’s a Muslim. As the violence waged in Beirut creeps into their town, Ruba’s father retreats further into his shell, becoming physically and emotionally unavailable due to events that he has witnessed and feels responsible for. Based on the author’s own experiences, this novel transplants us into the world of Ruba, a girl on the cusp of adulthood: a world where the threat of death is very real, the quest for survival strong. It also begs us to ask the question: what happens to those without the money or means to escape a war zone?